


a house is not a home unless it is with you

by Magali_Dragon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Experimental Style, F/M, Modern Westeros, POV Daenerys Targaryen, POV Jon Snow, Regency, Revolutionaries, Romance, Romantic Gestures, Soulmates, World War II, a story told over the years, series of interconnecting stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:53:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magali_Dragon/pseuds/Magali_Dragon
Summary: Daenerys and Jon speak of what they think of ‘home’ and Jon promises he will give her what she seeks. No matter the time or place, whether they be king and queen, a revolutionary and a vigilante, a noble bastard and his trueborn betrothed, a war weary soldier searching for his missing sweetheart, or a newlywed couple unable to find the right house in a new city, they will always end up home.With each other.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 65
Kudos: 369





	a house is not a home unless it is with you

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was something I have been thinking about doing-- an experimental style, a similar theme told over different stories/universes-- and it wasn't until the anniversary of Daenerys's betrayal and a beautiful moodboard I saw on Tumblr by **@youwerenevermine** of Dany's home being the red door and the lemon tree, did I get inspired and bit by the fic bug. 
> 
> This fic may not make sense and it is purposefully vague. I hope you enjoy it regardless. :)

**I. A Queen and Her King**

Traveling by ship had been a familiar part of her childhood, whether it be via the skiffs and rowboats through the cannals of Braavos or the great three-mast cities on the sea that took her from one Free City to another, designed for long voyages around the edges of Essos. In a way she felt ships were her home; they were always going from one place to another, a cabin with a single porthole the closest thing she’d known for a time as her residence.

Of course, that was after they had to flee what she’d believed was the only home she’d ever truly known, where things were as good as they could be for an orphaned and exiled princess, hiding from assassins who would sooner see her dead than hear her claim she never wanted the throne they sought to keep her from ever holding.

The ship lulled her to sleep, rocking gently in the waves, propelled forward by strong winds off the coast of the Crownlands, before reaching the treacherous waters off the Vale, where she knew they would likely need to slow their bearing, to keep from getting smacked straight into the craggy cliffs and rocky shores that had taken many lives. She suspected they were somewhere in between, since they had gotten a late start from Dragonstone and there had been a bit of a rough sea, tossing them about for a time.

Perhaps they would be there in a few more days, it would take about a fortnight to reach White Harbor and from there another fortnight to reach Winterfell. It would only be two days on Drogon, but she wanted to approach as an ally, as a Queen, and not a conqueror. Even if that was her true heritage, her true identity. She took a deep breath, sighing into the pillow under her.

Dany wondered if it were morning yet, her eyes still closed, because the loveliest feeling of a fingertip dragging down the bumps of her spine, which chilled slightly in the exposed air of the cabin, her furs pushed down around her hips. She smiled, barely opening her eyes, letting out a contented _hmmm._ She eventually forced herself to peer up, smiling at her bed companion. “How long have you been awake?” she murmured.

He shrugged a shoulder, cool morning sun giving his pale skin a pearly sheen. They shared a pillow, her leg slung over his hip, their abdomens pressed together, and his arm hugging around her to draw pictures over her back. He was so warm, for someone who reminded her so much of ice. “You were dreaming,” he said. His gray eyes locked onto hers, the corners creasing in what she knew to be an amused way—he was happy. Such an odd emotion to witness from him. Although she’d seen it a few times now in the last couple days. Happy, sated, dare she even say—delirious. He nuzzled his nose to hers, whispering. “Wanna’ tell me what it was about?”

“Hmm, how did you know I was dreaming?” She curved closer to him, wanting to be a part of him. They had joined their bodies together in a way that she’d never felt with her previous two lovers, feeling swelling in her heart she’d never known.

 _I love Jon Snow_ , she thought as he lifted his hand, palming the back of her head, her hair now spilled free of braids, tangled about her shoulders. It felt like they had been together many times before, settled in a comfortable rhythm and familiarity that should have come from years, maybe decades, of togetherness and not the few months of limited time they’d shared. They knew each other, intimately, and she supposed it should not surprise her that he’d been aware she was dreaming.

He kissed her soft, their foreheads touching, and his hand came to hold to her jaw and along her neck, a move she noticed he did often, like he was making sure he could see her appropriately. “You twitch your nose and lips,” he teased, his eyes crinkling more, lips curving up. He nipped her lower lip, husky. “And you talk.”

“I do not!” she huffed.

“Hmm, cute little sounds. You said something like ‘house’, I think.”

 _The house with the red door and the lemon tree._ She had dreamed of it. Maybe because her dreams were truly happening, they were coming to fruition. Despite setbacks, losing her allies, losing her child…her heart clenched at sweet Viserion’s loss. The dream of her Braavosi home was a familiar one, comforting even. She took a deep breath, gazing at Jon Snow again.

She twisted her hand free from between them, lightly touching one of the horrid scars on his belly, watching his muscles quiver. She dragged her finger up to another, murmuring, feeling him relax under her touch. “When we fled Dragonstone, when I was just a babe…a knight named Ser Willem Darry took us across the Narrow Sea to Braavos. He hid us there for a time. I grew up there, in a home with a red door and a lemon tree. A cottage somewhere, I do not know.” She closed her eyes, blocking out the screams, the terror she felt as Viserys hauled her up from where she’d been playing, and screamed that they had to go. The blood, seeing the servants dead. Her first introduction to the reality of her life. She sighed again, trying to smile, to comfort him, as he looked troubled, as if knowing the story would not end well.

Of course he did, because he knew some of her story. “Dany,” he began.

She cut him off, continuing. “I spent my early years there. Playing in the lemon grove, feeling the sun on my skin…I was healthy, happy, loved even. I didn’t know I was an exiled princess. Viserys told me stories of course. Bedtime stories of murdering the man who murdered our father.” She spat these words out, now knowing that Viserys had romanticized their father in a way she’d come to realize was false. He was a child though; he didn’t know better. “Stories of Aegon and his sisters. Of dragons. Remembering a life we didn’t have anymore. How we’d kill the Usurper and take our family’s throne and legacy back.” She sighed. “But I was a child. It was my home.”

He kissed her knuckles, moving even closer, if possible, and enveloped her in his strong embrace, her head moving to the crook of his neck. She closed her eyes, inhaling his scent: leather, steel, and what she thought was snow—even if that didn’t make sense. “I think of it sometimes. I’ve only wanted to come home you know. I wasn’t supposed to be the Queen. Viserys was going to be King. Even after he died…it wasn’t until Drogo died, until I lost Rhaego, did I know what I wanted. I was the dragon. Not Viserys. Not my father even. Me. I birthed dragons again. I would take back the Seven Kingdoms, take back my home.” She frowned.

 _Home_. A land she’d never known, a land she’d lost barely hours after she was born. She closed her eyes, fighting tears. It was so close; she could feel it in her bones, in her blood. “We had to leave, when the assassins found us. I learned then my life was never normal, I was never just a girl playing in a lemon grove, feeling dirt under my bare feet…I never had a home after that. Never again. Going from city to city, begging for attention from Magisters and Triarchs. Getting doors slammed in our faces, laughed at, and sometimes we even lived on the street.”

At that, she heard him make a sound of distress, his grip tightening around her. She closed her eyes even tighter, blacking out the memories of Viserys crying when he thought she was asleep, of the rats that bit at her while she slept, and the gnawing ache of starvation. “Viserys managed to get us out of those times though. Somehow. Selling off bits of what we had, what we’d managed to flee with. When he gave up our mother’s crown, that was when he’d died, when I lost what loving brother I might have had.”

She took a breath, long and deep, and pushed up on his chest, leaning over him, smiling and assuring him she was fine, as his hand fell from her face to the middle of her back, pressing her against him. She dragged her finger on his collarbone, listening to the thud of his pulse beneath her touch, the warmth of his love. “When I need to think of home, when I need to go back to a happy time, I think of that house. With the red door and the lemon tree. It’s what I want. I want the Iron Throne, I want the Seven Kingdoms, and I want to take back what they stole from me, but in the end, I want that house. I want that home.”

He lifted his face, taking her mouth with his, and she gasped at the intensity of the kiss. The feverish feeling returned to her, spreading throughout her body, and she gripped him, moaning softly into his mouth as he held her close. When he pulled away, she felt fuzzy, drunk even, and closed her eyes, catching her breath. He stroked her hair, whispering. “I will give you that home Dany. You deserve it. We’ll find that house, with the red door and the lemon tree, and if I can’t find it for you, I’ll paint the door to the Red Keep red and plant a lemon tree outside of it.”

Tears welled up, spilling from her closed eyelids, and she sobbed, burying her face into his neck. _I love you so much_ , she thought, too scared to say it just yet. It was too new, this fragile creation between them.

They spoke of his home, Winterfell, something she considered funny, how he had been a bastard in a castle and she a princess in the streets. “Quite a pair we are,” he mused.

“But it wasn’t your home,” she realized.

He shook his head, agreeing. “No, I don’t suppose it was. It was a roof over my head. I had food, education, and training…I was lucky even. Bastards are nothing in Westeros and highborn ones are treated far worse in some ways. The ones who get claimed are told we are lucky, because our fathers or mothers acknowledge us and sometimes give us shelter somewhere in their castle or family, but to be raised like a trueborn? The way my father did? Unheard of.”

It disgusted her, what he told her as they lay together in bed or sat at the table in her cabin drinking wine and feeding each other bits of bread and cheese. He told her of what his father’s wife said to him, what did—or didn’t do—to him. “I was scared of her,” he admitted. “She never lifted a hand to me, but she isolated me. I knew I had to leave. Knew I could never be better than Robb at anything. If my father sought to seek for my legitimacy…well…it could have been very bad. He very well could have granted me everything that Robb should have gotten as the firstborn son, as his heir.” He threw a piece of bread into the brazier, where it popped and hissed, a snarl pulling at his face, giving him a wolfish look. “Now I am the Lord of Winterfell and Robb is dead.”

She climbed into his lap, her arm going around his shoulders. He’d thrown on his trousers and she simply wrapped herself in a fur from the bed. She pulled the fur around him too, so they could huddle together, and she kissed him reassuringly. “Winterfell might be a place to lay your head, but the red door and lemon tree is not just…it isn’t just a real place.” Her fingertips curved over the nasty sickle scar over his heart. Her violet eyes bore hard into his, conveying all she could of how much she loved him, how much they were alike. “It is here. It is a place where you feel home. You never felt home there. Or at the Wall. Maybe you are still looking for it.”

He gave her a funny look; a crease of his brow, a strange glint in his eyes. She did not have time to process what it might mean, before he was pulling her towards him again, and lifting her from the chair, setting her gently back into the bed, raining kisses over her face as he began to move down her body, sending her thoughts away as she gripped him, needing him.

They moved as one, their hearts entangled, and she stared up into his loving gaze, knowing that he would do it, he’d bring her home.

And she would bring him home too.

**~/~/~/~**

**II. Revolutionaries**

“Fuck the king!”

“No taxation without representation!”

”The people have a voice!”

”No more taxes!”

The crowd gathering in the square were shouting, waving their flags, throwing their hands into the air, and shouting their demands, while the constables tried to fend them off from getting access to the local tax office. It was too bad in their attempts to stave off the riots, they did not notice the young man slipping out from where he’d lit the fuse, which led through the coil around the office, and ended up attached to several barrels of gunpowder placed strategically around.

It would not hurt anyone, there was no one in the office. That was the point. It was to send a message. Jon slipped back into the riot, tugging his hat over his head, moving through like the ghost he was, and smirked when as he took off at a light jog down the alley, he heard the explosions behind him, the crowd screaming in delight, laughing and scattering, while the king’s so called _representatives_ dealt with the aftermath.

He moved easily through the cannals and the alleys. He hadn’t been born there, but he’d spent most of his life there. A bastard son, his father long dead, he had to leave because his stepmother certainly would never have allowed him to stay. He came to the capital for work, refusing to freeze his dick off at the Wall like all the other realm’s bastards. He could read, he could write, and for some reason people gravitated to him. And he _hated_ how the realm treated their subjects.

They would learn soon that the people had a voice.

And he was going to help make sure of it.

He slipped carefully into an alcove as two men ran by the alley, shouting that the “wolf” was back. “Uh oh,” he mumbled, but smiled, and ducked into the door, which opened for him, and he fell sideways. Before he could register anything else, a set of arms flung around him, dragging him back into the room. He didn’t fight; there was no point.

“Did it work?” a breathless voice asked, before a set of warm lips traced along his ear. “Well?”

Jon grinned, spinning around and embracing the woman he would soon call _wife._ He kissed her hard, laughing. “Fuck yes it did. Your plan was brilliant.”

Daenerys laughed, planting her lips over his, moaning into his mouth when he began to pull at the laces of her dress. She pushed her fingers through his hair, curling her nails into the back of his scalp and he groaned at the nip of her teeth on his lower lip, eyes rolling back into his skull at the warmth filling him. It was holding fire in his arms, as hot as the explosion of gunpowder several blocks away, the light of which filled the darkened room.

He took a brief moment to take in her face, the moonlit glow of it, thrown into relief from the darkness and the fire beyond the windows, her violet eyes turned almost indigo, but still sparkling, like jewels. “I cannot believe you are here,” he murmured, almost to himself. He thanked the gods every day of his life that she came into his world.

She smirked, pushing off his coat, which had powder stains on the arms. They would need to burn it. Any trace of the attack, otherwise people might suspect. “Well believe it darling.” She gathered up the coat and he pulled at his tunic, tossing it with the coat. “There’s clean clothing on the table.”

He ignored the clothes, sinking into a chair by the hearth, and waited for her to start the small fire before he moved to pour them each a cup ale from the jug she’d set out. They didn’t have much. They didn’t need much. “We need to get out of here, go into hiding. I just heard them say the wolf was involved.” He pulled at some of the meat she’d set out as well, tossing it sideways towards the silent wolf who lay in the corner.

Ghost snapped his jaws around it, gnawing happily at his treat. Dany nodded idly, going to pull the curtains closed. “How do you think they know it was you?”

“Because where the dragon goes, the wolf goes,” he answered. The raid she’d led the previous week on a caravan coming from the west with the king’s gold made the news, partially because she always left survivors, to take the word back that the Dragon Queen had visited. She dispersed the funds immediately to the people who needed them. Left behind her calling card on the remains of the burning caravan, the three-headed dragon sigil.

It was something she’d adopted, claiming she had the blood of the dragon, she always felt affinity for them. _”Maybe my family was from Valyria or something, where they came from, I do have silver hair and violet eyes.”_ Dany was like him. Cast out onto the streets, having to survive on her wits alone. She’d stolen from him a few years ago, he’d chased her down, and after a year of cat and mouse, they’d somehow never been apart.

They loved each other. Desperately. He sometimes thought when she went off on her own that he’d lost a piece of his soul. “The people need us,” she said, going to sit in his lap, her arm draping around his neck. She sighed. “We cannot leave them.”

“No, we cannot,” he agreed. The others—Gendry, Davos, Tormund, Missandei, and Grey—they were all involved, they were doing what they could to bring about change. He knew Davos had to go into hiding, the crown had discovered he was smuggling in goods without being taxed to give to the orphanages.

Dany twirled her fingers in his hair, pressing her head to his, mumbling. “Sometimes I wish things had been different, you know? We weren’t born into nothing. We could be kings and queens.”

“Maybe we were, in another life.”

“Do you believe in that sort of thing?”

He shrugged; he wasn’t sure what he believed when it came to gods and lives. Just that they had to take care of their own, in the here and now. “We need to move,” he told her. They could not stay in their current location for too much longer. He paused. “Perhaps we could go south, just for a time. I’ll get word to Gendry or Grey. Tormund can help us, he knows everyone.”

Dany wrinkled her nose; she didn’t like fleeing. “What about the children?” she murmured.

The orphanages, the children of the city, the ones who bore the brunt of the king’s edicts. “Missandei will take care of them,” he murmured. They would not be gone long. Just long enough to get the heat off them. “We’ll be back. Fuck the king.”

“Fuck the king,” she agreed. She sneered. “And the Lannisters and the Baratheons and the Starks and all of them that think they can take the power from the people.”

He nodded. His family were Starks. They shunned him, cast him out. Dany didn’t know her people. They didn’t have family, just each other. “You’re my family, I will protect you,” he vowed.

“And I you,” she promised, kissing him.

They took each other to bed, tangled together, unable to stop the overwhelming feelings that swept them along in waves of love and desperate need. The fire died out, leaving them with only the thin blankets on the bed and their bodies to keep warm. He kept her tight to his chest, her silver curls wrapped like ropes around his fist, turning over and over again.

She traced aimless patterns on his chest, her breath soft, tickling his skin. “This place is not our home, but I feel like we have to protect it as such,” she murmured. She tilted her face to his, smiling. “One day we will have a home for our own. We won’t have to move from place to place.”

It was something he wanted to give her. As a husband, he should be able to provide for her. “One day,” he promised her, kissing her knuckles. He smiled against her lips. “I swear to you. We will have a house, we will be married, and we can grow old and gray there together.”

“With a red door,” she whispered.

He frowned. “A red door?”

“Hmm, I don’t know why, I just always thought my home should have a red door.”

“I’ll get you a red door.”

She giggled. “And a lemon tree. Like the rich people, the nobles have. Lemon trees for lemon cakes.”

“Anything for my queen.”

Her lips pursed, smirking up to him. “I’m cold Jon Snow. Keep your queen warm.”

He did, keeping her plenty warm that night. They left the next morning, slipping along the dark streets, disappearing long enough for the crown to wonder what had become of the dragon and the wolf. Only to return once more, taking what was theirs, and they fought, and they fought, until they could get what they needed.

A revolution had begun and by the time it ended, when the smoke and ash faded, they were still standing, a bit battered, incredibly tired, but they’d done it.

Jon took her out of the city, the only home they’d known, to go find a new life and a new start. “Where will we go?” she wondered, arms wrapped around him as he galloped the horse down the streets out of King’s Landing, the castle fading to nothing behind him. She sighed, gripping him tight. “Where is home now, Jon?”

“With you,” he murmured, turning his face to hers, smiling. He reached into his cloak and removed a lemon; one he’d stolen from a crown shipment at the docks the previous day. He handed it to her, and she grinned, circling her fingers over the bumpy yellow fruit. He grinned. “Let’s go find your red door Dany.”

She kissed him. “Wherever that red door is Jon, I just what you there too.”

“I will be,” he vowed. He didn’t look back, but chuckled. “Fuck the king, Dany.”

“Fuck the king, Jon.”

He turned the horse towards the north, and they took off, Ghost loping beside them, the notorious Dragon and Wolf off to defend their people and find their home too.

**~/~/~/~**

**III. The Bastard and the Lady**

Daenerys tried to focus on pouring milk into her tea, which was difficult with the woman across the table from her, who was spitting fire, complaining for the past twenty minutes or so about things that could not be fixed. It didn’t matter, she tried to tell herself. It was just Margaery complaining, trying to be supportive, to say things that she thought her friend would agree with, even if there was no point in changing them. They couldn’t be changed anyway.

Dany attempted to tune out her friend, but it was difficult. Margaery could be quite passionate. “I know he is my goodbrother, but all the same, it is shameful, arranging to marry you to a bastard, why, you are a Targaryen! I should speak with my goodfather. Perhaps he will see reason.”

“It does not matter,” she mumbled, trying to bring Margaery off her high horse. Margaery could afford to complain all she wanted. She was married to said bastard’s trueborn brother, the heir to Winterfell. Dany fussed with her gloves, the lace edges slightly frayed, as was the lace along the bodice of her dress. The same lace, in a poor attempt to make her out of season dress look fresh, had been added to the skirt’s hem. It looked as out of place as she did with the gorgeous Margaery in her mint green gown, straight from the finest seamstresses in King’s Landing.

The wedding would be in a few weeks’ time. Margaery didn’t understand how lucky she was, even to be married to a bastard. She did not have any prospects, the last remaining heir to a tarnished estate. No one would marry her, there was nothing she could provide to the match. Just embarrassment, for the misdeeds of her father and her younger brother. She tried to sip her tea, but she found she just couldn’t. Margaery’s words twisted in her belly and she tried not to think too hard on them. On her betrothed.

“Did you hear that Lord Robert Baratheon purchased Dragonstone for his brother? Can you imagine? A Baratheon in a Targaryen estate?” Margaery sniffed. Dany knew she was _trying_ except the news only served to darken her mood further.

She nodded, forcing herself not to think of it. Instead, to focus on the wedding in due time. She was a Lady of House Targaryen, but soon she would be the wife of a _Snow._ “I heard,” she murmured, twisting her cup around in the saucer. She sighed. “I hope it is as…wonderful a home to him as it was to me.”

Dragonstone was her home, technically, but she was not sure she could really call it that. She had been born there, spent a few years as a babe in its halls, but that was all. She had been living as the guest of the Stark family for many years, courtesy of her elder brother’s marriage to the Lady Lyanna Stark. They had sadly perished in a journey to the Vale, when their ship crashed into the rocks. She was lucky they allowed her room; lucky that Lord Eddard Stark had arranged for his bastard son to marry her.

Many women would love to have been on the arm of Colonel Jon Snow, save for his less than reputable birth. He was quite handsome, brooding, and at all the parties they gossiped about him in the corners, giggling when he glared in their direction, all the ladies dreaming of his dreamy gray eyes and his soft pink lips. Most of the time those eyes were sullen, and the lips pressed into a thin line, but Dany knew that beneath his cool demeanor, Jon Snow was actually quite warm.

It was his upbringing as the bastard son that forced him to remain aloof in most settings. Same as she had learned to quietly blend in the corner, as much as she wanted to be as passionate as Margaery. Her father’s squandering of the estate, her brother’s premature death, and her other brother’s further destruction of their family fortune and reputation had resulted in her current predicament.

Margaery set down her teacup. “Robb told me that he and Jon were out looking for homes today.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, obviously Lord Stark offered a set of apartments in Winterfell for you and Jon after your marriage, but you know Jon. He does not want charity.” Margaery sniffed again, clearly in disagreement. “He insists that he can provide for you both.”

“Hmm.” Dany knew he could. Jon was shrewd. He had amassed a small, rather comfortable, fortune for himself during his military campaigns. It was his status as a child of his father’s affair during his first year of marriage to the Lady Catelyn that prevented him from a title and other comfortable status among the highborn. She knew it embarrassed him. He wore the title _bastard_ like armor.

In the same way she did with her status. A highborn lady without an estate or dowry. She took a deep breath, wishing Margaery would cease talk of her betrothed. “I believe they may have found a small manor house, probably in need of repair,” she said, gazing up towards Winterfell, from their spot on the terrace. She smiled up at the great house that would become hers when Eddard passed. “Jon insists that he will have his own estate one day.”

“I am sure he will.” Jon was nothing if not resourceful.

“You will have to make it your own, of course. I can help you, Grandmother loves her flowers, perhaps we can arrange to have the gardeners from Highgarden visit, ah, _the house_.” Margaery was trying to be supportive. Dany didn’t care.

She shrugged. “I will have to see it of course.”

“When I can finally get my hands on this estate things will change.” Margaery glared at a statue of a wolf beside them, as though it had offended her. “No more of this drab gray and black décor.”

Dany had always liked Winterfell. It was homey, despite its drafty stone corridors and yes, gray and black décor. She thought of the house she’d spent some of her time in, in the South, after her parents’ deaths and before Rhaegar took them North. It was not much, but she always liked that it had a red door. Her family’s colors were red and black. They seemed to suit her as much as the gray and black of House Stark suited Jon Snow and Winterfell.

She lifted her teacup again. “I should like a house with a red door,” she said, rather suddenly.

Margaery glanced sideways. “Oh?”

“Hmm.” It was just something she thought of as _home._

The doors to the house opened, a maid stepping out. “My lady,” she said, nodding to Margaery. “Lord Robb and Colonel Snow.”

“Oh!” Margaery giggled, bouncing to her feet to greet her husband in a rather unladylike manner, as Robb in all his handsome glory, swept from the house, embracing her the same. “You have returned!”

“Aye, we have,” Robb said, laughing. He kissed his wife and turned to grin at her. “Lady Daenerys.”

She bowed her head. “Lord Stark.” A shy smile pulled on her lips at his brother, who stood quietly behind him, hands behind his back. “Colonel Snow.”

Her betrothed smiled back at her, very quick, only she might have been the only one to notice. “Lady Daenerys,” Jon murmured.

Robb clapped him on the shoulder. “We have success! Jon here has purchased the estate a few miles from here. The old Mormont property, before they moved to Bear Island.”

“That drab place?” Margaery exclaimed.

“Well that drab place is now Jon’s. I’m going to call it the Wolf Cave.” Robb sat down at the table, pouring himself a cup of tea. He grinned at her, his blue eyes sparkling. “You have your work cut out for you Daenerys. It certainly needs some assistance to look like a real home.”

Dany could see Jon’s cheeks turning pale pink beneath the dark beard that covered most of his jaw. She frowned, glaring at her future goodbrother. “I think it will be lovely. I look forward to it.”

“Two weeks and my brother is a married man!”

Margaery giggled, leaning into her husband. “And Daenerys is a married woman!”

Dany turned pink too, coming to her feet, and stepped towards Jon, wishing she had known that she would be seeing him today, thoroughly embarrassed at her secondhand attire. “Would you care to go on a walk?” he asked, ever polite. He lifted an eyebrow and she smiled briefly, knowing he was silently demanding it, if only to get away from his brother.

She was grateful, nodding and they left the two Starks to giggle with each other, behaving wholly inappropriately. It wasn’t until they walked quietly through the grounds, to the godswood, and the ancient weirwood tree where they would exchange vows in two weeks. “I did not know you were searching for a separate estate,” she said, folding her hands in front of her.

If they had not spent close to the last ten years living in the same house, they would have most assuredly had a chaperon, but sometimes people seemed to forget that Jon was well, _Jon_ and she was _Daenerys._ They still had not spent a lot of time together. Jon had gone to the military and she had hidden away, the tarnished Targaryen. Too often she felt like a showpiece, everyone staring at her, and she suspected Jon felt the same. They shared a lot in common in that regard.

Jon nodded, his hands still locked behind his back, his posture ramrod straight, even if he was not in his military uniform. He always wore all black, she noted, and she wished she could do the same, if the color on women was not always associated with mourning. “I felt that it would be better suited for the two of us if we did not share the same estate at Robb and Margaery.” He paused, a wry smile tugging on his lips. “And I also do not want to impose on my father any more than is necessary.” Another pause. “I am sure you agree.”

“I do.” She glanced at the ground, digging the toe of her small boot into the ground. Margaery always chastised her for wearing boots instead of slippers, but for times like these, she liked how she felt grounded.

He cocked his head, smiling again. _He only smiles with me_ , she observed, the thought alone bringing a little grin to her lips. “I know it will not be what you are accustomed to…”

“I am not accustomed to anything,” she interrupted. She walked around the weirwood, touching the snow-white bark, her fingertips digging into the roughness. She focused on the red veins that snaked along the trunk, ignoring the sap that stained her white gloves. “I am Lady Daenerys Targaryen, the last of my house, ruined and begging for charity.” She made an unladylike snort, disgusted. “I only am here because of the good name of my brother Rhaegar.”

Jon moved around the other side of the weirwood, to stand in front of her, his hand on the trunk for balance, as he stepped up onto one of the thick roots. “Dragonstone was your home.” He hesitated. “I…I inquired about it, but…”

“It is in disrepair. The current tenets will no doubt find it too expensive to upkeep.” It would then sit empty. Falling even further to ruin. Her heart clenched. “It is not my home.”

“Winterfell is not mine.”

She looked up at him, her hand lifting to grip one of the branches coming off the trunk, letting one of her feet drop from the root upon which she stood, dangling precariously. “It is your home.”

“A house is not a home. Not always.”

 _Quite right._ “And you believe that this…house you have purchased today will become our home?” she asked.

Jon flashed a quick smile, nervous. “I hope so,” he murmured.

Dany nodded, chewing her bottom lip. She cocked her head. “I should like it to have a red door.”

“A red door?”

She was not used to demanding things, she had never been allowed to. She ducked her head, mumbling. “If it please you of course.” She could never remember her gracious manners when she was alone with Jon. Margaery rubbing off on her, she supposed. Lady Catelyn would be disgusted. Eyes downcast, she gasped when she felt his fingertip on her chin, lifting her face up. He peered down at her, his gray eyes darkening. She swallowed hard, before she almost slipped straight off the weirwood root.

Except he caught her, locked his arm around her waist, and she tumbled against his chest for support, her feet falling to the ground. He gazed down at her, heated, and she felt fire churn in her belly. “May I kiss you Lady Daenerys?” he murmured, his hand rising to lightly stroke at her cheek.

She had shared several kisses with him over the years. The first when they were ten. She smiled, nodding her consent, and he lowered his lips to hers, gentle and soft. She sighed, accepting the kiss earnestly, arms locking around his neck, pressing to him. He kept her standing and broke away a moment later. “We should return to the house,” she murmured. They were to be married, but that still did not mean they could just hide away together.

He nodded, kissing her once more. “Before we go,” he said, his brow furrowing, dark brows pushing together. “I want you to know something.”

“Yes?”

“You might be my wife in two weeks, but you are also going to be my partner. It is your house Daenerys. Your home.” He lightly brushed his fingertip down her cheek again, voice dropping, trembling. “I just want you happy and if a red door makes you happy, I will paint all the doors red. I haven’t had a home. Neither have you.” He brushed his nose to hers, whispering: “We can have one together.”

She felt warm all over after he said that, unable to speak, to find the words to return the sentiment. Jon separated from her and they returned to Winterfell, Margaery tittering about asking how their walk went, but Dany could only mumble how it was fine. Jon wanted to make a home for her, a home she had never known. As the bastard raised in the same house as his trueborn siblings, she suspected he had not felt home either.

After the wedding, they stayed at Winterfell, and Jon took her on a honeymoon South, to Dorne. While there, she procured a small lemon tree, something she had remembered from when she grew up on Dragonstone, before she left for the North. It would not last too long, but for as long as she could tend it, she would. Jon joked that his wolf Ghost would take the lemons off, thinking they were toys, but she knew Ghost was a good boy who would leave the lemons alone if she asked him.

The house Jon purchased on the small estate was lovely. It would be just large enough for a few children running about. Her dearest friend Missandei and her husband Grey, would stay with them in a cottage out back on the land, to help keep it up, and she looked forward to turning it into a place where she and Jon could be happy.

She loved him, very much, more than she thought she could. Margaery and Robb had been lucky, their arrangement quickly turning to attraction and love, but Dany knew others who were not so lucky. Jon loved her and she loved him. Even if the world thought that she should be shamed for marrying a bastard or even if Jon should be shamed for being arranged to marry a fallen lady like her, she was not, and neither was he.

One fine morning, while she was writing a letter to her former chaperone, Ser Jorah, thanking him for sending her books about her family’s ancient homeland Valyria, Jon called for her from the front of the house. “I am in here!” she called back, setting down her pen. She turned slightly in the chair, peering over at him, frowning as he came rushing through the door to her study. She laughed, squealing when he swept her from her chair. “Oh Jon! You are filthy! Unhand me!”

He laughed, swinging her into his arms. “Never!”

“What have you and Ghost been doing, rolling in the pigsties?” she laughed, Ghost barking and dancing about around their feet as he carried her through the house to the front hall. He set her to her feet, pecking her lips. She wrinkled her nose. “You are dirty, sweaty, and what have you done to your shirt!” It was streaked in dirt and his trousers were equally filthy. He had something on him that looked even like…her eyes widened. “My gods! Jon are you bleeding!?”

“No. Here.” He ignored her concerns, taking his cravat from his pocket, tying it around her eyes before she could say anything. “Keep your eyes closed.”

“Well I see no point in that, you have blinded me with this thing!”

Whatever her husband had in mind, she sighed, knowing she could not stop him from seeing it through. He opened the door and carefully walked her through, off the front stoop and into the grass. She frowned. “What is this Jon Snow?”

He turned her around in his arms, tugging her against his chest. “Okay, three…two…one!” With flourish, he whipped off her blindfold and she blinked, the harsh sunlight continuing to keep her blind for a moment before she took in the sight, he’d surprised her with.

And she covered her mouth with her hand, laughing.

Their house was gray, with dark shutters, but standing out against it, even with its fading paint, splintered eaves, and roof in need of repair, was a freshly painted bright red door.

Beside it, he had set her lemon tree in a stone pot.

“Oh!” she cried, tears flooding her vision. She blinked hard and tried to keep them at bay, but she couldn’t. It was the house she’d dreamed of having, what she’d told him, and he’d remembered. She spun in his arms and kissed him, squeezing him hard, laughing and crying at the same time, unable to speak.

He rained kisses down her face, murmuring how he loved her, how she deserved everything good, and he would see to it she got it. She nodded, covering her eyes again with her hand. “It’s our home,” he mumbled, moving to press his forehead to hers. “You and me, Dany.”

She laughed, biting her lower lip, her hand dropping with his to her belly. “Yes,” she murmured. “You, me, Ghost, and....” She pressed his hand tight to her, hoping he could feel the swell through the fabric. Dany met his eyes again, grinning wide when she saw it dawn on him.

He laughed, sweeping her up into his arms once more. Dany could not stop smiling. There was no reason to stop laughing, smiling, and enjoying each other. For they both finally had their home.

**~/~/~/~**

__

**IV. The Separated Sweethearts**

_He had a hard war_ , they whispered about him behind his back. Sometimes even right to his face.

Jon ignored the whispers; he knew what they said about him as he limped about his family's estate. About how he went off to be a hero, came back broken. About how when he left, he had a sweetheart to kiss him goodbye, a lock of her silver hair tied with a red ribbon he kept in a locket against his heart. His mother told him to ignore them. "They did nothing during this war", she scoffed, tossing her glossy dark hair over her shoulder, as she helped him down the stairs. He hated his injury, hated how weak it made him feel.

They didn’t know where she was, no one did. "She went to fight, you know her," his cousin told him, somewhat disappointed, as gentle ladies should have supported the war effort by rationing, buying bonds, and planting victory gardens. Not running off to actually _fight_. His entire family had been destroyed by the world war. He got on the train from Winterfell with his cousin, dashing Robb the heir to the grand estate, and the bastard son of Lady Lyanna. If he died, no one would care, but if Robb...well...Robb laughed and ran off across a mine field and that was the last of Robb. Bran was paralyzed, Rickon dead in an air-raid that hit the underground station he'd been in with his mother, also gone. His uncle killed in an assassination of high-ranking generals. Cousin Arya lost somewhere in Essos, behind enemy lines, and later discovered in scrolls from a prisoner camp, but they still hadn’t heard from her yet.

Jon fingered the lock of silver hair, it was dry and brittle, and yet it was his most treasured possession. He sat in the back of the car, trying not to hear those whispers in his mind, as the Westerosi military driver took him from the ceremony where he'd received Westeros's highest military honor. The seven-pointed star on the red and gold ribbon was buried in his pack; he did not honor the Seven and the government scoffed at his Old Gods. It was a pity honor, for the sole survivor of the noble and ancient Stark family who all went to war. Never mind, they sneered when they said "Snow" as he limped up to accept the medal.

His mother hugged, kissed, and held him close; she had lost much as well. "They are looking," she said, when he scanned the crowd again, hoping beyond all hope to see the one person he wanted desperately to see.

All he knew was not long after he said goodbye, his letters started to go unanswered. The last one reading only: _"This is my war too, my people they are killing. I must protect them. I must fight. Our love is stronger than their hate, than the strife, than this war. We will be together again, if not in dreams or beyond, but when it ends. I love you, my white wolf, and I will see you soon. Your beloved Daenerys"_

That letter was lost somewhere in the trenches, somewhere as he marched from camp to camp, from city to city, fighting a war to save humanity from a tyrant who thought to annex every piece of Essos, who hated Valyrians and wanted to see anyone he didn’t feel _pure_ put to death. Tywin Lannister took his own life before they could drag him to trial, but his daughter Cersei was good enough. Jon didn’t care about them. He didn’t care about the governments in Essos rebuilding and the people back home coming to terms with the shell-shocked men who returned.

All he wanted was his Dany.

Lyanna told him she had left behind a letter for them too. Her brothers were dead, her great-uncle too ill to do anything, and her family home in ruins. They had fled ages before, when Valyrians were first targeted, for their alleged _blood magic._ She had been the ward of a Northern house, the Mormonts, and he’d fallen in love with her in school. They were sweethearts. He wanted to marry her, but she said not yet, not until after the war.

A promise for him to return, Dany teased.

And she was gone. And he had no home anymore. Winterfell was not his, it was Robb’s and Robb was dead.

The car was meant to take him to the train station, where he would go south. Lyanna had planned to take some more time in Kings Landing, she claimed she was looking for Dany too. She was also looking for Arya. She didn’t want to go back to Winterfell any more than he did. All her brothers dead, her nieces and nephews gone and shells of themselves. He kissed his mother goodbye, got in the car, and he would go south, where it was warm, where maybe he could find her.

“You got plans?” the driver asked him. “To stay in service?”

They came to a stop outside of the bustling train depot. “No,” Jon answered, climbing carefully from the car, leaning on his cane. He slung his pack over his shoulder, not looking back.

“Why not?” the driver called out.

Jon didn’t answer. He had no interest in serving a government who had done nothing but destroy him. He was half-tempted to toss the medal out the window. It did nothing for him. It didn’t bring back Dany.

In the train compartment, he went over her letters. He twiddled the lock of hair. He stretched out his leg and he gazed out the window. The last known sighting of her was in Dorne. Dorne was a large region. He frowned at the telegram from the private investigator, the one Lyanna had been paying. Stepstones. That’s all it had said. The almost abandoned series of islands that led to the Essosi peninsula from Westeros.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered, clutching the silver hair. He closed his eyes tight, falling asleep. He dreamed of their home. Of the place they imagined they’d have when this war ended, when they could be a family.

_”I want a cottage, somewhere small, but large enough for our children.”_

_“And how many will we have?” he teased._

_She skipped across a stream, as they wandered the Wolfswood, his hands in the pockets of his trousers, shirtsleeves rolled up, and her skirts pinned to her belt as she danced around in the water. She laughed, throwing her arms into the air. “As many as you want Jon Snow!”_

_“But I will not be carrying them, it is entirely your decision.”_

_“Such a modern man you are,” she cooed, giggling. “Whatever shall I do with someone like you!” She exaggerated a swoon, falling into his arms. They spun around in circles, her skirts flying around her again and her hair coming loose, silver whipping around her face in fraying braids. She stilled, her hands cupping his face and her violet eyes boring hard into his, breathing: “One day Jon Snow, we will have a child and we will have a home. With a red door and a lemon tree. Somewhere warm, somewhere we can be free of any war.”_

_He kissed her, promising her the world, whatever she desired._

_Several days later, standing on the train platform, he promised her the same. “You are my home,” he swore to her, wearing his new military uniform stiff and bright, while she tried not to cry, her silver hair hidden beneath her black cloche hat, with a red grosgrain ribbon around it. All around them, boys—not men—held their mothers, wives, sweethearts, sisters, and shook their father’s hands, off to war, never promising they would return, because they all knew many of them wouldn’t._

_She pressed the lock of hair into his hand, tied with the same red grosgrain as the ribbon on her hat. “And you are mine Jon Snow,” she whispered, their noses pressed together, breaths intermingling. Her tears landed on his cheeks. “So please, come home to me.”_

_“I will get you that red door and lemon tree,” he said; he didn’t promise it, but it would carry him through. In the darkest of times, he thought of that mystical place, where they would make their family._

_Dany’s violet eyes twinkled, the tears sparkling. “Just give me you Jon. That’s all I want.”_

_He kissed her one last time, the train whistle warning, Robb shouting for him to hurry up, they had a war to win. He jumped up into the car and leaned out the window, grasping her fingers. “I’ll come back,” he shouted, unable to stop himself. He gripped her fingers as she ran along the train. They finally broke, as it picked up speed and she reached the end of the platform, and he shouted, before he could stop himself: “I promise!”_

The train stopped in Sunspear, to change out engines, before it moved further south to the final destination. When it reached the tiny little depot at the Stepstones, and he descended from the carriage, he was quite the center of attention. He ignored the odd looks he received, a limping young man in military dress, with only an army green pack over his shoulder. They all knew he’d come back, but at what cost? He made his way through the village to the inn where he’d called and booked a room. He immediately discarded his army uniform, glad to be rid of it.

The following day, he took up his cane and ignored the inn-keeper’s offer to drive him around, needing to stretch his tight muscles. He had come to despise the heat from his days in Essos, but he needed it now, after returning to the cold and damp of Winterfell. It helped him, rejuvenated him.

Made him think of her.

Jon kept his hand around her lock of hair in his pocket, his jacket slung over his arm and his sleeves rolled back up. He had eschewed his mother’s demands that she allow him to cut his hair before he left, the dark curls unkempt and falling about his face. He limped out of the village, along the dirt roads, and ended up near a lemon grove. He paused, gazing at the craggy trees with their bright yellow fruits, some of them heavy, branches bent over to the ground from the weight of them.

_Lemon tree._

He smiled, stopping at the open gate to the grove. He gazed further, down a short dirt path, to the stone cottage. He moved to turn away, to keep walking, but something prevented him. A heavy feeling in his heart, keeping his feet still in the dirt. He lifted his head up again, staring to the cottage.

_Red door._

“Oh gods,” he mumbled.

_Home._

The feeling grew stronger, it drew him closer, walking down the path, and before he got to the door, it flung open, a small child running out. A little girl, with thick dark curls, and a dirt-streaked paisley-patterned dress, skidded to a stop in front of him, a wide smile pulling across her face. “Hello!” she called, waving.

“Hello,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked, not rude, because it was a very good question for a strange man who just walked onto her property. She pushed her curls from her face, giving him a good look at her eyes. His heart skipped. _No, it couldn’t…no._

They were purple. Not only purple. They were _violet._

It wasn’t uncommon. The Stepstones led to Essos, there were a good portion of Dornish who had violet eyes, tracing their heritage to those from the other continent. Except these were…he knew the color. Knew the flecks of gold in them. The slight tilt. The crinkle at the corners. That smile, the way her nose twitched. Even the shape of her face, heart-like.

_It can’t be._

“I…” he stammered, unable to speak. It was his mind. His mind had finally gone. It was the lemon trees, the red door, the cottage…he was making this up. It wasn’t real. The war had finally gotten to him. It now forced him to create images that were only in his heart, real enough to converse with, and he should stop immediately and return to the village, return to Winterfell, and seek medical help.

“Lyanna? Darling who are you…”

He lifted his head up to the woman who just walked out from the cottage. She stopped and stared at him, holding a basket in her arms. Her silver hair was gone, shorn from her head like a boy’s, and she wore a tattered dress. Except it was her. He knew so, because he had seen her every single night in his dreams, since the day he met her when he was but ten years old and she’d walked into the classroom in her secondhand clothes, nervous and foreign to them all.

_No._

Whatever trickery of the mind, he did not know. He could only stare at her, at the woman he had last seen on a train platform before he went to war, five years ago. Could only have seen in his memories and in his dreams. That’s all this was, he tried to tell himself. Just dreams again. So he said her name, allowed himself to believe.

“Dany,” he gasped.

Except unlike in dreams, where she faded away when he opened his eyes, she stepped towards him and stared a moment. Until in a fluid movement, so quick he didn’t register it until afterward, the basket sailed sideways, and she sobbed, running straight for him. He couldn’t move as fast, but he threw the cane aside and lunged for her, grabbing her around the middle and hauling her up against him, as she clawed at his face, trying to kiss and see him for the first time. She cried in Valyrian, while he remained speechless.

_Dany. His Dany. His home._

He kissed her, held her so tight neither could breathe, savored the perfect feeling of her in his arms once more. They finally separated, only barely, and she did not let go of him, still holding his face as she cried. “It is you. How did you find us?” she cried.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, truthful. He gazed at the house, the door, the trees. “I guess I just…it brought me here.”

She sniffed, crying, tears marring her smooth face. “I thought you dead. They said you died. I could not go back. I couldn’t get back to the North, everyone was gone, they said all of the Starks were gone.” She touched his jaw, fingers shaking. “It is you.”

“It is me,” he promised her, fingers pushing through her hair again, to kiss her, to never let her go.

Except a small voice broke through his thoughts, reminding him that they were not alone. “Mama? Who is he?”

He tore from her, staring at the child again, with her dark curls and her mother’s face. Dany moved to the child, letting go of him and knelt, pushing back those silky tresses, kissing her little face, laughing joyfully. “Lyanna, this is…” She looked up at him, apology and nervousness and fear filling her eyes, creasing her brow. “This is your father.”

_Father._

_My daughter._

He almost fell as well, wishing he had his cane for support. “Daughter?” he croaked. He almost asked _how?_ except he knew, his cheeks coloring with the memory. The night before he left, they had promised themselves to each other in the godswood. They had come together, for the first and the last time, because she wanted to know what it was like before he left, and he wanted to promise himself to her completely.

She nodded, her smile breaking across her face, arms still around the little girl. “Yes,” she laughed, sniffing back tears again. “Yes, this is Lyanna.”

“After my mother,” he whispered. _Oh gods she will love that._

Lyanna looked up, shy, her violet eyes twinkling. “Hello.”

“Hi,” he managed to get out.

There were so many questions. What happened to her after she left Winterfell, how did she get back to Westeros, gods even how did he find this place when he had been searching for her for so long…he pushed them out of his mind, as she stood again and he reached for the little girl, who smiled wide at him. He reached for Dany, embracing her again, his daughter taking his hand, squeezing tight. “You’re home,” Dany mumbled into his chest.

_Home._

Jon looked to the house, with its red door and its lemon tree, and he felt a peculiar feeling in his heart, like he had been there before. He gazed at his daughter, at his love, and he smiled, finally a peace after so long.

Finally home.

**~/~/~/~**

**V. The Newlyweds**

“I tell you there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, we’ll be living in a hotel for the rest of time.”

“Living in a hotel isn’t so bad.”

“Yes, because you have someone else coming in to wash your sheets and towels for you, don’t think I haven’t forgotten that Jon Snow, you will be doing laundry whenever we get a house.” _Whenever that might be, when we’re old and gray and falling apart_ , Daenerys sighed, staring out the window of their SUV, while their big fluffy white wolf-mix drooled over her shoulder, trying to sniff over to her travel coffee mug. She swatted at him. “Ghost, lay off.”

Jon reached over for the glove compartment, removing a chew stick and threw it backwards. “Ghost go lay down,” he ordered. He glanced at the GPS in the console of the fancy SUV, reaching to punch in their next location as he pulled over into a parking lot. “Where to now?”

Their agent was of absolutely no help, too busy gossiping about the neighbors than he was in actually providing assistance, Dany thought, glaring at the email from Varys, which indicated that their next showing would be later that evening, almost clear across town in a neighborhood she did _not_ want to live in. “He insists this next one is _the one._ ”

“He said that over the last ten.”

“Hmm, he listens to you. I think it’s because you have a cock.” Nevermind, they were moving to Braavos from Westeros for _her_ job and it was _her_ money going to pay his commission, and _her_ pretty little husband was just around for the ride. So to speak. Jon was happy with the move. They had met in college in the North, moved to the South for her job, and were now heading to Essos because it was easier for her to engage with clients, since the majority of the Free Cities were interested in her dragonglass technology. Westeros was still living in an ancient age; she didn’t anticipate they would be willing to work with her for some time. If ever.

It had been almost six months since they’d made the big move and they’d been renting off and on, living in hotels the other times, since nothing seemed to suit. They hadn’t bought anything, living in apartments and in Jon’s case, barracks, until he finally retired from military service.

“Do you think I’m being too difficult?” she wondered, scrolling through some more houses that Varys had sent her. None of them looked like how she pictured in her head. Sometimes even the picture in her head kept shifting, she just knew that of all the places they’d seen, they just…didn’t have _it._ She sighed, shoulders slumping. “Maybe I’m just being too particular, you know?”

Jon reached his hand for hers, lifting it up to kiss her knuckles. He squeezed her fingers, smiling reassuringly. “You are not difficult. You are not particular. You know what you want.”

“Is that not the same?”

“Not to me.”

She chuckled, leaning over to kiss him lightly. “You’re a good husband Jon Snow.” He always knew exactly what to say to make her feel better. Even if he was likely dragging his feet because he enjoyed not having to do laundry. Her head dropped to his shoulder, gazing out the window. The bustling Braavosi streets and highways snaked around them, too fast, too loud, and too…just _too._ Too much of everything. That was Braavos, but it was also what she didn’t want in a place to finally call their home.

They had been married for a little over a year. She had dreamed of their home since the moment they first moved in together, in a dingy little flat in the North, since that was all they could afford at the time. Sure, they had a tidy little nest egg from a small inheritance he received from his mother and she had received from her brother, both of whom sadly died when each of them were born. They just didn’t want to touch it. That money was for their future family. Not a luxury like a place to live.

Except now they were in a position to not only use it, but to dive right into it. They were going to go all out, she decided. They’d get _exactly_ what they wanted. No more renting, no more shitty landlords, no more creaking appliances that would blow up if you didn’t turn the dial _exactly_ , no more anything. It was going to be just _theirs._

There was also the peculiar feeling they just _belonged_ there. She felt like she’d been in Braavos before, walking down the cannals too. It happened sometimes. Just odd little feelings that prickling along her skin or on the back of her neck, sending her hair on end. Jon said it was just her senses heightened in a new location, but he was always very practical. Even if she finally got him to admit on one of their first dates that he really did not like visiting the Wall because he felt like _“I died there or something, it’s just colder than it should be.”_

Probably why she didn’t really like the North. Sure, she went to school there for her Master’s degree, but that was because her great-uncle Aemon was a professor at the university and if she went, she could get half off tuition. Braavos though, well…she just felt comfortable there, as busy as it could be. She just couldn’t seem to find the right place to live though.

“Are you sure you didn’t like the one by that old church thing? What was it called?”

“The House of Black and White? Jon no way, that place was where they ripped people’s faces off like a million years ago or something.”

“Really?”

“Did you not pay attention when we did the tour?”

He smirked. “If I recall you were wearing that black and white dress.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a pig.”

“You married me.”

“I sometimes wonder why.”

Jon nodded, dead serious as he turned onto the road. “Yeah me too.”

For whatever reason, he occasionally said things like that, and it still bothered her, even after all their years together. He just didn’t think he deserved good things. She took his hand again into hers, smoothing it between her palms, idly rubbing her fingers over his wedding ring, and kissed his cheek again. “I love you,” she murmured, head dropping back down again to his shoulder.

It sagged slightly as he exhaled, quietly murmuring: “I love you too.”

They drove silently for a bit, while she flicked through her phone with her free hand, scowling at the latest batch of houses Varys had found for them. “They’re just too new or too old…and gods! This one has no kitchen!” she complained.

“What if we just get something for the time being, hmm?”

“Buy a house like we’re renting it? I don’t want to do that. Jon, we haven’t had a place to live that is really _ours_ since we got married. I just think in this new continent, new future for us…we should really have something, I don’t know…permanent.” In her mind she could see it. Like she’d had since she was a little girl, bouncing from family friend to family friend and ultimately through the foster care system with her brother.

They never had a place to call theirs. Both their parents died when she was a baby, their older brother before them. Viserys had locked onto his wife’s family in Dorne and refused to leave. He had his family there. He had the house he never had growing up. It was her turn, in a way. “What about looking outside of Braavos?” he suggested. He sighed. “I mean, the commute would suck, but we could look at Lorath? Take the ferry in? Push comes to shove; we could even look closer to Pentos or Norvos…”

The trailing off of his suggestion showed even how _enthused_ he was at the prospect of the commute. Their entire days would be spent either in their car or on the train. At least Lorath had a ferry, but even then, it would be a bit much. “No, I think we should stick to Braavos.”

They were meandering through the coastlands now, just outside of the city limits, heading towards the latest dud. Even if she should be positive, it had just been disappointment after disappointment. The pretty grasslands on one side of the car blew by them, while on the other were houses set back from the road in orchards, fields, and thickets of trees. Beyond them, she knew there would be the coast, facing the Narrow Sea. It was a lovely area, the homes out here very old and in some cases historically recorded. They were the type of houses that had land and that came with estates and names and were definitely not up for sale.

It seemed Jon had taken the scenic route, probably to give her time to blow off her steam before she blew fire at Varys when they met up with him. She continued to play with his fingers, staring out at nothing while he drove, content in the silence. Off to the right, she could see a fenced in grove of lemon trees, a stone house peeking up over the top…

“Stop!”

Jon yelped, slamming the brakes, Ghost jumping up and skidding on the leather backseat, trying to keep from falling flat on the floor. He spun the car off to the side of the road, gravel and rocks skidding up under the tires in a cloud of dust and dirt. “Dany! Seven hells! Are you alright?”

Not answering, she flung off her seatbelt, climbing out and rushing around the hood of the SUV, to grab hold of the wooden gate in front of the house. She almost fell right over it, the rough wood biting into her palms and her heart thudding with glee. _This is it._

_This is my home._

_Our home._

Jon came around to her, reaching immediately for her shoulders. “Dany, what the seven? You terrified me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I just…Jon look at it!”

“I am.”

The questioning was obvious in his tone. He had no idea what he was looking at, but she did. It had everything she wanted. It was perfect. She didn’t know why. The lemon grove and rough knotted olive trees…a patch of grass where they could sit with Ghost and maybe one day their child. The house was a soft beige stone, red tiled roof, and wooden framed. It was old, a little rundown even, with weeds and tall grass. The windows were smudged, and the paint chipped on the shutters.

It didn’t matter. It was perfect.

There did not appear to be anyone living there. She opened the gate, stepping forward onto the dirt path, walking in a trance to the front. Jon shouted after her, cursing, saying they had to get going, they were trespassing, was she mad?

_Maybe._

She stopped in front of the house, staring at the red door. It was old, hinges rusty, the paint flecked and faded. There was a crude little sign bolted beside it. With the edge of her shirtsleeve, she rubbed the dirt, reading the bronze engraving. “House with the Red Door, Braavosi Provincial Historical Monument No. 998, est. circa 285 A.C.”

Jon whistled low under his breath. “That’s old.”

“I’m sure it has been rebuilt a bit.” It appeared as though the stone was the same, she knew that there were plenty of buildings in Braavos that had lasted near that long. The masons of the olden days were somehow better than the current ones. She touched the marker again, hand dropping to her side. There was something about the house. She turned away, arms snaking to hug herself. “Come on, let’s get going, I just…I don’t know, I had to see it.”

“Register says it’s for sale.”

“What?”

He handed her his phone, pointing to the screen. Sure enough, the historical register indicated it was for sale. It had been sitting in a trust for years, no one wanted to purchase it. Probably too expensive to keep up, she thought, gazing back over her shoulder to the home. It didn’t have a sea view. There weren’t many neighbors either. The grove would be a pain to keep up, she was sure. She briefly smiled, pulling her mind from the house with the red door and the lemon tree. It was just her mind playing tricks, wanting something she knew she couldn’t have because they couldn’t find what they really wanted.

Sure enough, when they met Varys, the three houses he ended up showing them were just not the ones she wanted. None of them had that _home_ feel she was looking for. “We’ll try again,” Jon vowed.

“Hmm, sure.”

They did have to work. Dany kept going back to that house with the red door, finding her car driving along the old streets to park in front of it, sitting on the fence and leaning over the gate. It didn’t change. Didn’t suddenly have some giant sign in front saying it was free to the crazy lady that thought she should live there.

“I feel like I’ve been here before,” she murmured, glancing down at Ghost, on one of her trips out to see it.

It was probably just fatigue. Stress, maybe. They turned around and drove back to the hotel, where she tried to forget, opening up a new email from Varys claiming he had finally found their home. This time he was _positive._

A couple months later, Jon picked her up at her office for lunch. “She’ll be a bit,” he told Missandei, her partner, who was going over a portfolio for their next client. He winked, rather obviously, which had her friend laughing.

“Jon, seriously? Missandei is my business partner.”

“And she was your maid of honor at your wedding and I’ve known her for years, she knows everything.”

“Well yes.”

He pushed her into the SUV, a bit too excited for her liking. Jon was always very serious, sometimes too serious. For him to be this, well, _giddy_ , there had to be something afoot. She scowled at him, when he climbed in and handed her a black tie. She grabbed it, holding it up, silently demanding what the seven she was supposed to do with it. “Put it on,” he laughed, taking it from her and reaching to tie it around her eyes.

“Jon!” In spite of her frustrations, she laughed. He was never this playful either. “What are you doing exactly?”

“It’s a surprise.”

It was rather nauseating to be in the car unable to see, especially in Braavos, with its quick turns, numerous stoplights and general chaos of traffic. They ended up on what she assumed was a highway, cruising for a bit before turning off. She heard what sounded like gravel under the tires. “Where are we?” she repeated, although she didn’t expect him to answer.

“Almost there.”

“Jon!”

“Shh,” he laughed. “Trust me, you’ll like this.”

They eventually came to a stop. Dany’s heart was pounding out of her chest and her palms sweaty. She was more curious than nervous, simply because whatever this was about, Jon was clearly thrilled for it and she wanted to know what had him like this. It had to be big. He wasn’t even this nervous the night be proposed to her. Or maybe he was. Actually yes, he was, because he almost fainted when she said yes. He claimed he’d lost his balance while on his knee, but she didn’t believe him.

He helped her out of the car, holding both of her hands. “Jon, I’m wearing heels,” she complained. Also one of her designer suits, which she really could not afford to get dirty, since she had business drinks with a prospective client later that evening.

“It’s okay I have you. Alright, stop.” He reached behind her, the tie loosening. “Alright, open!”

Eyes blinking open, she adjusted to the sunlight, and realized they were in the lemon grove, standing in front of the house she’d spotted, the house she loved so much. Except this time there was a sign staked in front of it, a very large red sign with white block letters: SOLD.

“Jon?” she murmured, brow furrowing, thoroughly confused. Her hand remained tight in his, violet eyes lifting to meet his dancing gray ones, silently questioning. _No_ , she thought, glancing from him to the sign and back again. _No, he couldn’t…_

Jon handed her a sheaf of papers, his words soft, albeit thick with emotion. With love. “I know how much it meant to you. It was the only one you liked, the only one you said felt like home. I went to the trust. The woman in charge there, let me tell you, quite an odd one. Kept calling herself a Priestess of the Lord of Light, Kinvara her name was, quite strange, anyway…I guess I appealed to her better nature and she knocked off well, seven hells of a lot. Said that the true owners had returned to take it for good.” He grinned, beaming. “And my mother would have wanted my inheritance to go to this. It’s ours.”

_Oh gods._

Making a mental note to rip him a new one for keeping it from her for as long as he had, Dany flung her arms around his neck, planting a hard kiss on his mouth, giggling and spinning in his arms, tears streaming down her face. “Oh gods,” she cried, running up to the door. Jon came up behind her and handed her an old-fashioned iron key. She slid it into the lock and flicked it, pushing the door open with a light creak.

It opened into a wide arched entryway and she could see straight through to the back of the house, with windows that looked out on the land, in the distance you could see the sea. She sniffed. _This is it._ She turned, to kiss him again, to tell her stupid wolf just how much she loved him, when he held his hand out, palm up, waiting. “I believe the groom has to carry the bride over the threshold,” he teased.

“Oh you,” she laughed, but let him lift her up all the same, grinning and kissing him, arms around his neck as he carried her over and through the house, into the front hall. He set her down, both of them turning in the space. It was not a large house, but she could already see them in it. Already see their wedding photo hanging over the stone fireplace, the stupid wolves playing poker picture he’d had since university in the bathroom—where it belonged—and their giant comfy gray couch facing the windows, where they could gaze at the sunset.

Jon frowned, reaching to wipe a stray tear aside from her cheek. “Are you alright love?’

“I’m perfect,” she sighed. It was the house. She shook her head, frowning up at him, still standing in his arms. “I’ve been here before. I know I have; I just don’t know why…or when.”

“Maybe you have a past life,” he teased.

“Maybe.” She let go of him, walking back out and picked up a lemon from beside the door, from the tree whose roots appeared to run deep, the shade of it keeping the sun off their faces. The lemon smelled sweet and she lifted it to her nose, smiling and inhaling its tangy scent. She turned, tossing it at him, where he caught it one-handed. “Maybe in this past life I was a queen and you were a king.”

“Maybe we were revolutionaries.”

“Romantic lovers,” she drawled. She kept up the game, sighing, hands clasped under her chin. “War-torn sweethearts!”

He grabbed her around her waist, swallowing her giggle with a long kiss, tipping her backwards. He pulled her back up to her feet, their arms tangled around each other, not letting the other go, hands moving over each other’s bodies and faces, tracing and mapping random patterns. “Home is a read door and a lemon tree, I don’t know why,” Dany whispered, her heart so full it might burst.

Jon shook his head, murmuring against her lips. “Home is you.”

They both gazed around, at what was now _theirs._

Dany thought of the secret she’d been keeping from him. Perhaps even the reason their house hunt had taken on a more sentimental and almost desperate need of late. Her hand reached for his, cupping her cheek, and slowly lowered it to press to her belly. “Home is our family,” she murmured, nose brushing his.

It took him a moment. Confusion flickered across his face and he frowned. “What do you mean?”

She laughed, her arms snaking back around his neck. “Jon Snow, you can be rather obtuse. Don’t you know anything?” She kissed his cheek, leaning to whisper into his ear. “We should probably start work on the nursery.”

Another moment passed. Dany wasn’t sure how plain she should make it, unless he wanted her to call her doctor and have her relay the results, but suddenly he whooped, arms throwing up to the air and he laughed, lifting her around the waist and embracing her tight. “Oh gods! Seriously? You’re having a baby!?”

“ _We’re_ having a baby,” she corrected. Her smile split her face and her cheeks ached. Everything she had ever wanted in her entire life and it was all happening. Every wish she’d ever had was coming true. It was like all her dreams were coming true. “You and me Jon Snow. Parents.”

Jon pulled her tight to him again, spinning her so they could gaze at their new home. “Well I better get started then,” he laughed.

“Get to work Jon Snow. You’ve got a red door to paint.”

**fin.**


End file.
